Top 25 Facebook games of May 2012

Both lists for May’s top 25 Facebook games saw two big debuts: The recently-launched Candy Crush Saga is already tearing its way up the charts while Marvel: Avengers Alliance just managed to break in thanks to some impressive user gains.

We start with the list of top 25 games by daily active users, which is the best way to evaluate a title’s core audience. Twelve games were up from last month, with the largest gain going to King.com’s Candy Crush Saga with 1.3 million DAU. Disney Playdom’s Marvel: Avengers Alliance has been steadily climbing the charts and had the second-highest gain of the month with 620,000 DAU. Rovio’s Angry Birds had the third-highest gain with 400,000 DAU. King.com’s Bubble Witch Saga didn’t quite make it into the No. 3 spot like we thought it might, but it still managed to gain 100,000 DAU and move into the No. 4 position.

CityVille and Hidden Chronicles had the largest losses on the list; CityVille was down by 1.4 million DAU, while Hidden Chronicles dropped 1.2 million DAU.

Now it’s time to check out monthly active users, which measures a game’s overall reach on Facebook. CityVille continues to hold the No. 1 spot on the list, with slightly more than 4 million MAU over Texas HoldEm Poker in the No. 2 position. Zynga’s Hidden Chronicles had the largest drop this month, down by 4.7 million MAU, and subsequently dropped from the No. 3 spot to No. 5.

The largest gain belonged to Zynga Slingo with 4.3 million MAU, followed closely by Angry Birds with 4.1 million MAU. Bubble Witch Saga continues to grow, taking third place for gains this month with 2.9 million MAU. Although it debuted on our Top 25 list in the No. 25 spot, Disney Playdom’s Marvel: Avengers Alliance had the fourth-highest gain of the month with 2.1 million MAU.

All data in this post comes from our traffic tracking service, AppData. Stay tuned next week for the beginning of May’s Top 25 gainers and losers, when we look at the continued performance of games that appeared on the top 25 DAU list.